Sanyo's DMP-M400SD "bring your own storage" DAP

Sanyo's got a new digital audio player poised to drop on the Japanese market, though it'll mainly be of interest to folks with a couple of extra SD cards laying around, as the DMP-M400SD contains neither a hard drive nor any flash memory. What you are getting with this latest member of the Diply Music line is a pendant-style device sporting a backlit screen that supports MP3 files as well as WMA tracks with or without DRM. Clearly stressing size over features, the M400SD is pretty lean when it comes to extras; in fact, besides acting as a USB mass storage device, there's really nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd -- especially the rather ho-hum 12-hour battery life. If this still sounds like an attractive option to you, then $60 is all it will take to pick one of these up when they're released on the first of next month.

[Galley @ Jul 24th 2006 11:38AM]

No AAC support = no sale.

[navamske @ Jul 24th 2006 11:39AM]

The fact that it can be used as a USB mass storage device suggests to me that you add your music files simply by dragging and dropping them from one folder to another. I had a similar device from Panasonic that also used SD cards, but I couldn't do the drag-and-drop thing -- I had to use a silly proprietary interface that would "convert" the tracks and then deposit them on the SD card in some enigmatic format that was useless outside of the player.

[Samuel McConnell @ Jul 24th 2006 11:52AM]

FYI - that Japanese folder name is "watashi no suki na uta", "Music I like"

[Chris @ Jul 24th 2006 12:05PM]

sorry but I can't see that thing selling. it's not totally easy on the eyes and no internal memory, i could see losing some sales over

[AndrewNeo @ Jul 24th 2006 12:50PM]

Now if they start dropping nice memory-less players at like $30 I'd be interesting at buying. Otherwise, for $60, I'd be expecting to see at least 256mb internal. Flash chips aren't that expensive.

[123 @ Jul 24th 2006 1:26PM]

I'd like to get a player like this and it looked like a good value to me until I saw that it doesn't take 4GB SD cards.

But still, this player for $60 and a 2GB SD card for $40 is still half the price of the 2GB iPod nano at $200.

[jnasato @ Jul 24th 2006 4:48PM]

"Watashi no suki na kyoku."

I like the design... Except, "Diply Music"? What the hell.

[Travis @ Jul 24th 2006 6:24PM]

Can't you get the same thing on phones now a days? As advanced as Japan is in technology, I have to agree with chris and Galley. No sale.